Supplemental: Yardley discusses campaign storylines!

We don’t think that’s how it works: In yesterday’s Washington Post, Jonathan Yardley reviewed Matt Bai’s new book about the Hart campaign.

That’s right—about the Gary Hart campaign! In 1987!

Twenty-seven years later, Bai is arguing that this is where the modern bullroar in the reporting of White House campaigns got its start.

In this modern journalistic bullroar, the nations’ reporters thrash about, trying to examine some candidate’s “character,” or at least pretending to do so.

Bai’s thesis doesn’t seem entirely wrong. During Campaign 1988, the press corps registered two major scalps. They got Candidate Hart on an adultery charge and Candidate Biden for plagiarism.

Because we happened to know him in college, we can tell you something about a third candidate in that 1988 campaign. Some reporters were trying very hard to get Candidate Gore for youthful drug use, and on an additional count from his youth.

We got many phone calls on these matters, from one reporter in particular. (We don’t remember who it was. Based on the published record, we could take a guess.) At the time, we were struck by how much the reporters wanted to get that third scalp and, if you really have to know it, but how poorly conceived their drug jihad was.

They were eager to get that third scalp! But in one fairly obvious way, we remember being struck by how dumb their questions were.

This wasn’t exactly the start of this candidate-hunting crap. Way back in 1972, they got the scalp of Candidate Muskie on a “character” rap. By the way:

YARDLEY (10/12/14): It happens that though I was not in any way involved in The Post’s coverage of Hart and have never met [reporter] Paul Taylor, I did devote part of a weekly column I wrote in those days to Hart’s case. I said that “in Washington, and wherever else two or more politicians may gather, he who does not get caught has ‘character’ and he who gets caught has none.” That seems to me as true today as it was then. The persecutorial media that so alarms Bai has no real interest in “character” and oceans of interest in sex and sensation. This unfortunately at times has involved what is known as the “mainstream” media, but the contributions of People and US Weekly and the National Enquirer and, especially, the Daily Mail Online and all those bloggers madly typing away have only intensified things. Probably the political climate would be a lot healthier and the political discussion a lot more constructive if the media would simply obey that most basic of biblical injunctions: He who is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.

To us, that passage seems to suggest that the press corps stages its jihads against candidates in a way which is dumb and unwise, but which is also “nonpartisan.” Simply put, the jihad starts when one of the hopefuls gets caught.

We don’t think that’s necessarily the way this syndrome works. The historical record seems fairly clear:

Decisions are often made in advance about which candidates have “character.” The jihads proceed, or get suppressed, on the basis of those prejudgments. It isn’t true that the jihads begin at the point when someone gets “caught.”

That passage by Yardley conveys a certain sense of the way these candidate jihads work. We think he’s offering an idealized portrait of the way the press corps works, as opposed to The Way We Are.

Tomorrow: Final points concerning two favorites of the analysts, their uncles Boehlert and Drum

Truth be told, 12:18, he said he couldn't remember before he said he could guess. And he said his guess would be based on the "published" recordabout which reporter called him "many" times asking him about drug use of his college roomate who was then running for President.

But you are right. Bob has scruples even if he has no long term memory of this trivial matter demonstrating the early days of the collapse of our intellectual culture.

Unless, of course, the reporter called him anonymously in order to add credibility to his claim he would treat Somerby as a confidential anonymous source.

Bob complains that "all these scalps came from one of the two major parties". I seem to recall Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew being "scalped", not that they didn't richly deserve it. I also recall massive support for John McCain as Republican candidate in 2008, especially from the NY Times. Of course, they turned around and savaged him once he was running against a Dem.

And, an entire set of books could be written about the media's harsh treatment of Sarah Palin -- treatment that continues to this day.

If that's what scalping means, then Gary Hart wasn't scalped. As another commenter pointed out, Hart deserved what he got.

I thought Sarah Palin had weak qualifications. Her administrative experience was only something like 2 years as Governor of a small state. I do think she was "scalped" on her cultural views, which were more moderate than the media represented.

Also, Palin's experience was little worse than Barack Obama's. Of course, his educational attainments were much superior to Palin's, but he had little or no administrative experience. His Senate experience was negligible. He had spent much of that brief period campaigning for President. One could not point to any particular Obama achievement in the US 'Senate.

Gary Hart was "scalped" by scandal unrelated to his politics, his policies, or the execution of his job. Nixon and Agnew were basically felons.

Obama was a Senator in the 109th and 110th Congress. He was a junior Senator in the minority for the former. It's the nature of the institution that he wouldn't have had his hands on the levers of power. Nevertheless, he sponsored or co-sponsored 570 bills, although only 15 became law. He proposed amendments to 50 bills, 16 of which were adopted. You can't point to his accomplishments because you never check the facts. Agree with his political positions or not, it's absurd to compare his involvement with his branch of government to half-term Palin's involvement with hers.

(The same applies to his career in the Illinois Senate, when he was in the majority party for only two years. He sponsored 100 bills a year for each of the eight years he was in the Illinois Senate, and worked on health care, anti-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, capital punishment, and more.)

Sarah Palin's major accomplishment as governor was to abuse her office in a vendetta to get her former brother-in-law fired from his job as a state trooper.

The usage finger writes and having writ moves on, and you can't do fuck-all about it. Yes, "jihad" means struggle, and it can denote a personal and internal struggle. But it can also mean a war against the infidel, from which the slang usage takes its meaning.

Are you going to complain when English speakers use "nirvana" to mean paradise?

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